Workshop 15
Professional Reading Specialists
Speaker:
Elizabeth Primas, Coordinator, Success for All, Reading Specialist and Coordinator, Reading Tutors and Volunteers, Bowen Elementary School, Washington, D.C.
Moderator:
Carol H. Rasco, Senior Advisor to the Secretary of Education, Director, America Reads Challenge, U.S. Department of Education
Abstract:
Every school should have access to specialists, including speech and language clinicians, English as a second language teachers, resource room teachers, and reading specialists who have specialized training related to addressing reading difficulties and who can give guidance to classroom teachers. Schools that lack reading specialist positions or have discontinued those positions need to reexamine their needs for specialists and provide staff members who are capable of performing equivalent functions. Reading specialists and other specialists roles need to be defined so that there is two-way communication between specialists and classroom teachers about the needs of all children at risk of and experiencing reading difficulties.
This workshop will focus on the professional reading specialist. The presenter will discuss the role of a reading specialist, the specialized knowledge about typical and atypical development of reading, the required communication between specialists and classroom teachers, identification of reading difficulties, modeling effective reading practices, and coordination at the instructional level. Participants will be encouraged to engage in a dialogue about the presentation.